Hard to believe, there was a time when Steven A. Cohen was not all that well-known on Wall Street outside of the hedge fund industry. Some even used to confuse the then-paunchy hedge fund trader with a popular magician with the same name.

* IRS puts brakes on corporate push to capture real-estate tax break. A.D. Pruitt and Amol Sharma – The Wall Street Journal. The Internal Revenue Service is stepping up its scrutiny of companies that are looking to avoid some corporate taxes by converting their operations into real-estate investment trusts. Link

* Despite tax rules, companies stick with U.S. Victor Fleischer – The New York Times. The tactics that multinational companies like Apple, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard use to avoid paying corporate income taxes might make one wonder why they incorporate in the United States in the first place. Link

* Calculating Apple’s true U.S. tax rate. Victor Fleischer – The New York Times. One lesson from the Senate hearing about Apple’s offshore tax planning is that figuring out what a multinational company actually pays in taxes is harder than it should be. Link

Welcome to the top tax and accounting headlines from Reuters and other sources.

* Some Republicans see IRS troubles as means to a big goal: tax overhaul. Jonathan Weisman – The New York Times. For Congressman Dave Camp, spotlighting the tax-collecting agency — and stoking voter antipathy for it — are ways to build momentum for his plan to rewrite and simplify the entire tax code, a goal he has set for the end of the year. Link

* Donors to Republican group drew IRS scrutiny. John McKinnon – The Wall Street Journal. At the same time the Internal Revenue Service was targeting tea-party groups, the tax agency took the unusual step of trying to impose gift taxes on donors to a prominent conservative advocacy group formed in 2007 to build support for President George W. Bush’s Iraq troop surge. Link